If you are a photographer, you know how tough the business is. It’s an incredibly competitive industry. Not only do you have to compete with other photographers for business, you must compete with technology. The availability of digital cameras, smart phones, and apps like Instagram has put many professional photographers out of business. The labor-intensive effort that you must put into photo retouching and editing burns many photographers out, until they lose their love for their craft altogether.
One solution many photographers are turning to is professional photo editing services to take the hours upon hours of tedious photo-editing off their shoulders, so they can focus on what they love. A few benefits of using a photo-editing service includes:
- More time to get business and make money.
Your income comes from your ability to gain clients, not your ability to edit your pictures, although that’s where most of you time goes if you do it on your own. Snapping a picture takes a few seconds, but the back-end work editing it is what often takes hours and hours. Sometimes what you get paid for your art isn’t worth the amount of time you put into it.
When you use a photo editing service, they take over the time-intensive side of the business for you, freeing you up to book more events and snap more pictures, and make more money. Ka-ching! - Perfect panorama stitching.
We know panorama stitching is a pain in the you-know-what. Sometimes, a photographer just can’t capture the glory of their setting in a single shot. When you take a few pictures, doing your own panorama stitching to get them to perfectly align so that their aren’t awkward pixels is tedious and sometimes looks terrible if you don’t get it just right. Even if you typically do your own photo editing, using an outsourced service for ad-hoc panorama stitching can make your job far more enjoyable. - Avoiding burnout.
As with any creative-driven profession, one of the biggest reasons photographers leave the industry is because they get so burnt out. What you love to do is create the perfect setting, the perfect lighting, and the perfect moment to snap the perfect picture. Yet most of your time goes to editing the power lines out of the backdrop of your perfect photo. It takes a thousand hours and no creativity. By using a photo-editing service, you are able to save your energy for the craft that you love. - Lower start-up costs.
If you are new to the biz, you know how much it costs to get started. You need lenses. You need lights. You need backdrops. You need blah blah blah. One of the most significant costs in getting your photography business up and running is the photo editing software. You can’t do your business without it, but the licenses cost a four-digit number.
When you use a photo editing service instead of acquiring the software yourself, you only have to pay anything when you have work that needs to be edited (hint: when you are actually making money).
If your long game dream is to one day do every part of the photography business in-house, this can be something you work towards. Using a service gives you the chance to get money pumping into the business before you spend the big bucks. - Professional photos without having to be a professional.
Many of the most common photo editing needs come from people who never intended to be in the photography business. You’re a realtor and need to showcase homes you’re selling. You are a food blogger and need to put together professional photos of your creations. You’re a clothing designer or own a boutique and need to create “invisible mannequin” photos of your clothing. Many times, you are forced into the photography field without a professional background. Being able to snap the photos and then put them in the hands of an editing service to get the professional photos you need without hiring a photographer is one of the best reasons to outsource photo editing.
Do you use a photo editing service? What is the biggest benefit that you get from it? Please share with us in the comment section below!